Apricot Ratafia

Absolutely brilliant! Quick to assemble, great in taste and really versatile! We've already had it as a drink, and as a dessert (leftover bit of walnut ice cream served with apricots, almonds and a little ratafia as sauce); I can also see me making this in jam jars to get smaller portions you give as presents.

I did my best to use only ripe apricots in a good shape. I've spotted a few apricots where one half was darker than the other and I'm not really sure what the cause of this could be - have they just taken on some of the dark colour of the brandy, or were they a little overripe? I'll report back in a few days/weeks should that be the cause.

Of course I didn't have a wide-necked screw-topped 1.2 litre bottle, though I had a 1 litre one; I just used all of the apricots, nearly all of the almonds and sugar, and approximately 500ml brandy.

Variations: Definitely add a handful of raisins! I could also imagine a few spices, if you like, something like cinnamon or clover. You might want to consider halved almonds (in length) instead of almond slivers, but I guess that's a question of personal preference.

Edited 22nd March 2012: We still have a little Ratafia left - I once nearly threw it away because all the apricots turned brown, but actually, that's down to the brandy - they're still perfectly edible, and when I served some Ratafia during a dinner recently, our guest was very glad to go home with the recipe.